We've increased the energy efficiency of our own operations by 27 0 h since 1992. put in other mediums, only one of Piranesi's ar- chitectural projects-a restoration of a church in Rome-was ever completed. His influence is none- theless lasting, and is discussed here in a series of videotaped interviews with contemporary de- signers-among them Daniel Liebskind, who ob- serves that Piranesi "invented a world where ar- chitecture was almost redundant." Through Jan. 20, 2008. . "Provoking Magic: Lighting of Ingo Maurer." Through Jan. 20, 2008. (Open Mon- days through Thursdays, 10 to 5, Fridays, 10 to 9, Saturdays, 10 to 6, and Sundays, noon to 6.) INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY 1133 Sixth Ave., at 43rd St. (212-857-0000)-"This Is War! Robert Capa at Work." Through Jan. 6, 2008. . "Gerda Taro." Through Jan. 6, 2008. Open Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 to 6, and Fri- day evenings until 8.) MORGAN LIBRARY AND MUSEUM 225 Madison Ave., at 36th St. (212-685-0008)- Émile Bernard (1868-1941) had only modest abil- ities as a painter, but his talent for friendship was great. "Paip.ted with Words: Vincent van Gogh's Letters to Emile Bernard" presents twenty letters that van Gogh wrote between 1887 and 1889 (Bernard's letters are lost). The Frenchman brought out his friend's ardent streak: trees in the ArIes countryside inspire reveries about color, light, and form; of the sun in southern France, he writes, "I revel in it like a cicada." Sketches grace the letters, along with descriptions of technique; a se- lection of works by both artists provide reference points. Among the many revelations here is one disarmingly simple plan: "A starry sky for exam- ple, well-it's a thing that I should like to try to do." Through Jan. 6, 2008. (Open Tuesdays through Thursdays, 10:30 to 5, Fridays, 10:30 to 9, Saturdays, 10 to 6, and Sundays, 11 to 6.) GALLERIES-UPTOWN Galleries are usually open Tuesdays through Saturdays, from around 10 or 11 to between 5 and 6; please call the gallery for exact hours. Chevron GUILLERMO KUITCA Opera is this Argentine artist's muse. In 2003, he designed stage sets for a Buenos Aires produc- tion of "The Flying Dutchman," in which a bag- gage carousel ferried the hero's drifting soul around the stage. Drawings related to that project are here, along with a row of melted-looking little works on paper based on the seating plans of opera houses around the world. Printed on pho- tographic paper, then gently smeared and warped, these colorful charts take on abstract, even mu- sical qualities, and invert the usual theatrical for- mula, focussing attention away from the stage and toward the audience. Through Nov. 1. (Gal- lery Met, Broadway at 64th St. 212-799-3100.) liTHE WRITER'S BRUSH II This exhibition of paintings and drawings, orga- nized by Donald Friedman, offers a delicious peek into the artistic pursuits of some eighty authors, from John Ashbery and Djuna Barnes to Günter Grass and Sylvia Plath. There are more than a hun- dred and ninety works, some by familiar visual thinkers like Henri Michaux and James Thurber, others by sleepers like Jonathan Lethem (whose colorful little paintings have a neo-expressionist zing). Most take up no more space than a desk corner, but otherwise they vary wildly, from a misty, wistful watercolor of the lake at Coole Park, by William Butler Yeats, to an appropriately fanciful zebra-tiger sketched in ink, by Jorge Luis Borges. Through Oct. 27. (Shapolsky, 152 E. 65th St. 212- 452-1094.) Human Energy'" www.chevron.com GALLERIES-CHELSEA CHEVRON is a registered trademark of Chevron Corporation. The CHEVRON HALLMARK and HUMAN ENERGY are trademarks of Chevron Corporation. 02007 Chevron Corporation. All rights reserved. RACHAEL DUNVILLE The color portraits in Dunville's New York début show were made in what the photographer calls "a distilled state of emotional undress." Several of the most striking involve physical undress as well: a young couple stand naked in the shower, and other subjects (all of them Dunville's friends in Missouri) pull down their pants, lift up their shirts, or otherwise strip for the camera. But nudity without emotional connection doesn't mean much, and the strongest images here are not just sexy, they're full of warmth and empa- thy-evidence of a genuine, complicated, and utterly engaging exchange. Through Oct. 20. (Peer, 526 W. 26th St. 212-741-6599.) LAURA LETINSKY With nods to both Irving Penn and J an Groover, Letinsky makes large color photographs of elegantly dishevelled tabletop still-lifes that are at once antic and restrained. In her newest series, however, she's no longer imagining the remains of a dinner party; the wine-stained ta- blecloth has been replaced by a wrinkled sheet of white paper, the stemware by a bitten Styro- foam cup or a crumpled Sunkist can. Although there's no pretense that these arrangements are accidental, they never feel anxious or over- determined, and every bit of color (a crushed berry, a pink net bag) pops in these witty, otherwise white-on -white landscapes. Through Oct. 27. (Richardson, 535 W. 22nd St. 646- 230-9610.) ALEKSANDRA MIR For this low-tech, amusing, and tacitly critical study of what is commonly known as "the news," Mir collected fifteen years' worth of front pages from the New York Daily News and the New York Post. Setting up a real-time newsroom-cum-atelier in the gallery, she and a team of assistants are sorting some ten thousand cover stories into categories and, armed with Sharpies, transform- ing them into posters. On a recent visit, the theme was weather, and the walls were papered with headlines alternately bemoaning heat waves ("Phew!") and blizzards ("Socked!"). On deck in the workshop was a series whose every head- line read "Cop Shot!" Through Oct. 27. (Boone, 541 W. 24th St. 212-752-2929.) KEITH TYSON In the installation "Large Field Array," two hun- dred and twenty objects-each roughly the shape of a two-foot cube-are laid out in a grid that fills the floor and studs the walls. Distinctions between nature and culture blur. A Plexiglas vat of bubbling mud rhymes visually with a movie marquee advertising "Top Gun" and "Blue Vel- vet." The moon is square. So is the earth, and both are the size of an Orange amplifier. Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" and Caravaggio's "Medusa" put in appearances, as do the u.S. Presidential seal, a cardboard box of giant kitchen utensils, and a stock-market L.E.D. crawl. It's part pop gazetteer, part sculptural tag sale. Through Oct. 20. (PaceWildenstein, 545 W. 22nd St. 212-989-4258.) JACK WHITTEN This capsule survey of works made between 1974 and 2007 spotlights an artist who has helped to radicalize abstract painting without ever lifting a brush. A quartet of recent, mosaic- like canvases look like experiments with bath- room tile, but they're actually composed of lit- tle squares of cast acrylic paint (sparkles are the result of pulverized compact disks). A suite of smeary, black-and-white drawings from the mid- nineteen-seventies have an eerily photographic effect-they could be portraits of afterglow. Turns out they were made from photocopier toner, while Whitten was an artist-in-residence at Xerox. Through Oct. 20. (Gray, 526 W. 26th St. 212-399-2636.) Short List WILLEM DE KOONING: Gagosian, 522 W. 21st St. 212-741-1717. Through Oct. 27. JAMIE ISEN- STEIN: Kreps, 525 W. 22nd St. 212-741-8849. Through Oct. 20. COLLIER SCHORR: 303 Gal- lery, 525 W. 22nd St. 212-255-1121. Through Oct. 27. KET AKI SHETH: Sepia, 148 W. 24th St. 212-645-9444. Through Oct. 20.